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r-ledger vs units

A side-by-side editorial comparison of r-ledger and units — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.

r-ledger vs units: at a glance

Featurer-ledgerunits
SectorAnalyticsAnalytics
Velocity score0.00.0
Sparks · 30d00
Top themesplain-text-accounting, r-package, beancount, hledgermeasurement units, r package, udunits2, breaking parser change
Last editorial update44m ago4h ago
WebsiteVisit →Visit →

What is r-ledger?

ledger adds a Rust toolchain fallback, so beancount imports work whether or not the Python tooling is installed.

An R package that imports plain-text accounting files — ledger, hledger and beancount — into data frames. Releases are sparse and driven almost entirely by changes in the external command-line tools it shells out to: date format shifts, decimal mark handling, binaries being removed from upstream projects. The last two releases show more activity than the several years preceding them.

Read the full r-ledger trajectory →

What is units?

units reaches 1.0 by rewriting its parser and accepting the breakage that comes with it.

units attaches physical units to R vectors on top of the udunits2 library, covering arithmetic, conversion and ggplot2 scales. Version 1.0-0 replaced the unit-expression tokenizer so numbers are consistently treated as prefixes, and expressions like ml/min/1.73m^2 now parse the way physiologists write them. Printing follows NIST conventions, and 1.0-1 is a fix pass over memory handling and parser edge cases.

Read the full units trajectory →

r-ledger vs units: editorial side-by-side

R
r-ledger
ANALYTICS
0.0

ledger adds a Rust toolchain fallback, so beancount imports work whether or not the Python tooling is installed.

◆ Current state

An R package that imports plain-text accounting files — ledger, hledger and beancount — into data frames. Releases are sparse and driven almost entirely by changes in the external command-line tools it shells out to: date format shifts, decimal mark handling, binaries being removed from upstream projects. The last two releases show more activity than the several years preceding them.

◆ Where it's heading

The package's job is absorbing churn in an ecosystem it does not control, and the recent releases show that ecosystem fragmenting and then being backfilled. bean-report disappeared from beancount in 2020 and its toolchains were finally deprecated in v2.0.13; v2.1.1 responds to the arrival of rustledger by adding rledger and bean-query as explicit toolchain choices and making the beancount path fall back to rledger when bean-query is absent. The other steady thread is column parity — code, id and comment columns arriving one at a time across the three register functions, so that whichever toolchain a user has produces comparable output.

◆ Prediction

Expect the remaining deprecated toolchains to be removed outright, and further column-parity work so the rledger path returns the same fields as the established ones.

U
units
ANALYTICS
0.0

units reaches 1.0 by rewriting its parser and accepting the breakage that comes with it.

◆ Current state

units attaches physical units to R vectors on top of the udunits2 library, covering arithmetic, conversion and ggplot2 scales. Version 1.0-0 replaced the unit-expression tokenizer so numbers are consistently treated as prefixes, and expressions like ml/min/1.73m^2 now parse the way physiologists write them. Printing follows NIST conventions, and 1.0-1 is a fix pass over memory handling and parser edge cases.

◆ Where it's heading

The long 0.8-x run was accretion — ggplot2 scales absorbed from ggforce, ud_convert(), matrix methods, steady performance work — while known parsing defects stayed in place. The 1.0 release finally traded backwards compatibility for correct parsing, and 1.0-1's pointer-wrapping and exception-propagation work suggests the C++ glue is being hardened behind it. Fixes cluster at the udunits2 boundary, which remains the main source of surprises.

◆ Prediction

Expect continued patch releases against udunits2 quirks and the new tokenizer's fallout rather than new surface area, with the ggplot2 integration and conversion helpers already in place.

Alternatives to r-ledger and units

Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either r-ledger or units.

See all r-ledger alternatives → · See all units alternatives →

Recent activity from r-ledger and units

Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.

  1. 2mo agor-ledgerrustledger supported as a beancount toolchain, with automatic fallback
  2. 4mo agor-ledgerbean-report toolchains deprecated; transaction code column imported
  3. 5mo agounitsMemory-leak and udunits2 parsing fixes after 1.0
  4. 10mo agounitsNew tokenizer parses compound units correctly
  5. 1y agounitsCopy semantics fix in ud_convert(); C++17 for old R
  6. 1y agounitscbind/rbind methods, ud_convert() and broad fixes
  7. 1y agounitsSilences a CRAN compiler warning
  8. 2y agor-ledgerTransaction id column for beancount and hledger; date coercion aligned
  9. 2y agounitsRestores simplify=FALSE for identical units
  10. 4y agor-ledgerrio moved from Imports to Suggests
  11. 6y agor-ledgerhledger date import fixed for newer hledger versions
  12. 6y agor-ledgerComma decimal marks and commodity prefixes parse correctly

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between r-ledger and units?

They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. r-ledger and units are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.

Is r-ledger better than units?

Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. r-ledger and units are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.

What are the best alternatives to r-ledger?

Top r-ledger alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "r-ledger alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/ledger for the full list with editorial commentary on each.

What are the best alternatives to units?

Top units alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "units alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/units-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.